Kharkiv students perform sombre prom waltz amid ruins of their destroyed school

A group of students symbolised the defiance of many Ukrainians in the face of Russian aggression as they danced in front of the rubble of the ruins of their bombed-out-school.

Amid a harrowing backdrop of shattered windows and scorched walls, students elegantly performed their "prom waltz" in front of their hollowed out school in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. In a widely circulated 45-second video shared on social media, the students can be seen performing a coordinated dance to a slow song on a basketball court, with a military vehicle behind them.

Soldiers dressed in what appears to be green army uniforms are in the background, watching the dance, along with onlookers who are using their phones to take photos of the mesmerising scenes.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said that the school was destroyed just days after Russia invaded its neighbour in February and later became an "outpost" for Russian soldiers.

The northeastern city of Kharkiv has been the target of intense Russian shelling, with scores of residents being killed and many of the city's buildings destroyed by missile strikes.

During the brutal war in Ukraine, Moscow's forces have targeted schools, among other civilian infrastructure, such as hospitals and shelters.

In May, 60 people were feared dead after a village school, which was sheltering about 90 people, in Ukraine's Donbas region was destroyed by a Russian bomb. The governor of Luhansk province said at the time that the school in the village of Bilohorivka had caught fire after the bombing.

After being repelled from the capital Kyiv and Kharkiv in the early stages of the war, Russia says it is on a mission to "liberate" the Donbas region, partly held by separatists since 2014, in the east of the country.

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